I don’t believe in fate
and yet my fate is sealed.
Before I knew myself
you sealed it with a kiss.
I fought my self and yours,
but open wounds re-healed
until the flames of pain
extinguished with a hiss.
Alas, secure fate
went quickly off the rail:
you sealed it with a kiss
and dropped it in the mail.
Colours are brighter on the edge and smells are sharper.
Borders are important.
There is no summer at the equator or winter at the North Pole –
a Winter Wonderland is impossible there, for there would be no wonder in it.
Love is equally impossible in hell and in paradise, for without choice there is only acquiescence.
I know of nothing more poignant than fall leaves in the snow,
they make you wonder and draw your breath in sudden joy.
Life is what happens on the border with death.
I come from a city
with people born on a blacklist.
I come from a country
which has since ceased to exist.
I come from a culture
where nothing is what it seems,
full of loud delusions and stifling truths,
where language conceals.
I grew on an ice flow that was cracking and breaking in spring.
I had to grow my roots wide.
So far that they reached different shores.
So strong that they gripped, and mauled, and changed the shoreline.
So solid that I became a bridge.
Now, bridges are never safe.
Never as safe as the solid land –
or at least they don’t seem to be.
They sway in the wind,
they rely on a few points of contact,
they have to strive just to stay in place.
You could transport a bridge to a safer place,
sell it like the proverbial Brooklyn Bridge
and make some cash on the way,
or move it for real –
to a safe harbour, out of the wind.
But even a broken bridge across the gap
has more purpose than a bridge on solid land,
it remains rooted in both shores,
forever a possibility.
Standing squashed on the train,
through persistent migraine
going down the drain
with the dregs,
look around and up,
squeeze your gaze in the gap
‘twixt the arms and the crap
in the bags.
Think of people inside
this elaborate hide
made to coddle and hide
their fears:
some are dressed to impress,
some are dressed to possess,
some are dressed to undress,
it appears.
As they hang off handrails,
in the hamster-wheel race,
do your best to embrace
their sorrow.
Don’t be sad, don’t be mad.
Smile and nod, look ahead.
They or you could be dead
by tomorrow.
Drown in the London night.
In the dark you see the light,
river beckons, cold and bright.
Drown in the London night.
Inspired by The Amazing Randi
My mind is a forest.
An impossible cathedral
with boundless pillars of trunks
and coloured light spearing through
the stained glass of the canopy.
The truth and beauty of it are breath-taking!
And I walk through life
looking up at the light
with dry golden eyes,
ever so beautiful…
Until I trip over the roots,
twisted roots of my forest,
lies to myself and others,
grown out of fear,
and habit,
and kindness,
and love.
And I find myself
in the deep dark wood,
staring with dark green eyes
filled with tears
at the light ahead.
My roots,
my trees,
my pain,
my joy.
All that we leave are footprints in the sand.
They fade in time. As everything, they end.
But as we look ahead and to the stars
we leave footprints to fade on moon and Mars.
